FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT STORM ACTIVITY - PAGE 5

Don't expect the 2007 hurricane season to be as calm as last year's, government officials and forecasters said Tuesday. They predicted a very active season, with two to four hurricanes likely to strike the U.S. coast in the next six months. "Last year was an unexpectedly easy season," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who urged all Americans who might be at risk to prepare early. "There's no guarantee this season is going to be anything but very tough." In all, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast 13-17 named storms, including seven to 10 hurricanes with three to five of those major hurricanes, meaning their sustained winds would top 110 mph. An average hurricane season has 11 named storms, including six hurricanes, two of them intense.

South Florida has truly come full circle from last year's drought, when the area scraped by on twice-weekly lawn watering to keep Lake Okeechobee from sinking too low. Swelling steadily from generous June and July rain, the 730-square- mile regional reservoir has risen so fast that water managers say they'll probably have to release some of its water next week. The discharges would be small and designed to mimic rainfall, 10-day-long pulses of water that would flow east through the St. Lucie Canal and west through the Caloosahatchee River into coastal estuaries.

Warning residents not to let down their guard, the federal government on Monday forecast an average hurricane season with five to seven powerful storms. Included in the prediction: two or three major hurricanes with winds greater than 110 mph and about 10 tropical storms overall. In a typical season, there are eight to 11 tropical storms, including five to seven hurricanes. If the prediction holds, it would mean a slower season than 2000, which was one of the busiest on record, with 14 named storms and eight hurricanes.

Last hurricane season, we in South Florida had a mix of fortunes. We were lucky because a huge and vicious Hurricane Floyd, packing 155-mph winds, only skirted our shoreline in mid-September and instead moved up the coast to plague the poor souls of North Carolina. We were not so lucky because a month later, a wobbly and soggy Hurricane Irene caught us off guard and plowed through our back yards, claiming eight lives and causing about $800 million in damages. The lesson to be learned, hurricane experts say, is that South Florida needs to be on guard whenever a storm, weak or strong, approaches our region.

The president of one of the tiniest nations on Earth appealed to world leaders on Tuesday to help keep his people and his land from being swamped. As American and European diplomats continued sparring at Earth Summit Plus Five over just how far industrial countries must go to combat global warming, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, president of the Republic of Maldives, said the very survival of his remote island nation is at stake. Scientists project that at the rate fossil fuels are being burned, spewing heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, average sea levels could rise three feet by 2100.

A renowned hurricane forecaster is predicting a busy season for 1996, but even with 11 named storms including seven hurricanes, it would be an improvement over last year. William Gray, a professor at Colorado State University, forecasts that two major storms - hurricanes with winds of 111 mph or higher - will form in the Atlantic, Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico. "We're expecting a little bit above average storm activity," said Gray, who delivered his prediction on Friday at the National Hurricane Conference in Orlando.

A national hurricane expert predicts a normal hurricane season this year - about six hurricanes. But given the fact that there have been only 12 hurricanes in the past three years, that's enough to send a chill up Florida's spine. The water in the central Pacific Ocean is cooling and that makes it likely that this year there will be more frequent and stronger hurricanes than in the past three years, Colorado State University atmospheric sciences Professor William Gray said on Friday during a speech at the National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans.

South Florida has yet to learn the lessons of Hurricane Andrew, but the region had better learn soon because the future will have more and larger storms, two top hurricane experts said on Sunday. Those more severe storms may even start this year. William Gray, a Colorado State University professor and noted hurricane prognosticator, said this year should be an above-average hurricane season with about 14 percent more hurricane and tropical storm activity than normal. "The reason I came down here is ... there may be future problems here," Gray said at a seminar in Hollywood run by the Jewish Federation.

Last weekend`s pseudo-monsoon wasn`t rainy season rain at all. The stormy weather was created by a not-so-chilly cold front, although the distinction between frontal storms and sudden summer showers is easily lost on soggy, umbrella-bearing people sloshing through a thundering downpour. But as bright, sunny skies returned to the region seven days later, forecasters said the rainy season probably could be declared as unofficially under way. "If we get another front, it won`t be as identifiable," said Noel Risnychok, a forecaster at the National Weather Service in Miami.

It's official. El NiM-qo has arrived just in time to greet the meanest stretch of the hurricane season, government forecasters said Thursday. That's welcome news for hurricane-vulnerable zones because the large-scale atmospheric condition inhibits tropical storm formation. Yet it would be foolish to let your guard down, said officials at the National Hurricane Center. After all, Category 5 Hurricane Andrew demolished much of Miami-Dade County in 1992, an El NiM-qo year. "Even if the season produces one hurricane, that one could come here," said James Franklin, branch chief over the center's hurricane specialists.